Development – Page 3 – Encounter Table Games

First All-Up Playtest Complete

I took advantage of the long Easter weekend to do some all-up playtesting of the expansion content I’m working on for Close Encounters. Of course I’ve tested all the bits of it before, in various combinations, but I hadn’t done an all-up test of everything at once. This testing cycle was also special because I was getting the perspective of some testers who haven’t seen any of the new content before, so it was a good opportunity to throw everything together and see how it went.

Tactical Choices

Oddly enough, this post isn’t about the tactics people use when playing Close Encounters. I’ll talk about that another time, because it’s an interesting topic in itself, but today we’re going to be looking at something different: representing tactics in the game.

Expansion Pack Contents

A month or so ago I shifted my development focus to expansion packs for Close Encounters. In some earlier posts I mentioned my thinking about them at the time, and then later on that I had more to think about in that respect. As I mentioned then, one issue is that there’s a great deal of content which could be added to expansion packs. How to package it, and what to include in each package, is a topic I’m constantly chewing over in the back of my mind. I think I’ll probably end up making some changes to the structures I’ve talked about already, although I’m not sure yet what they’ll be.

Project Management with Colours

I know a lot of people manage projects in one way or another – even if you don’t do it for money, it’s the sort of thing that comes up a lot. Building a house, organising a camping holiday, writing a book proposal… they’re all projects, and they all go better if you manage them.

In my day job, project management is something I run into fairly often. Working on Close Encounters and its expansions is also a project, so when I started seriously developing it I knew I needed to get organised.

The Agony of Choice

In the last few posts I’ve been talking about my plans for expansion packs for Close Encounters, and that’s where my development effort has been focused. Once I started getting to grips with it all, however, I found that there was quite a lot of stuff that could be included, and I started wondering if my plans for what goes into each expansion would cope with that.

Work In Progress – February 2021

With Close Encounters complete and marketing for it underway, my development focus has shifted to an expansion pack for it. For the moment, I’m prioritising what I think of as “Strapped and Packed” – an expansion which includes heavy weapons for the troopers, equipment cards for them to use, and some bigger and nastier bugs to oppose them!

Expansion Packs Update

Close Encounters is now pretty much finished in terms of development. I’m still making occasional tweaks to the phrasing of some of the booklets, but it’s all basically finalised. While I work on marketing for that, I’m also putting some of my attention into expansion packs for it.

I’m Proudest Of…

There are lots of things about Close Encounters I’m pleased about.

For one thing, the rules are robust and snappy – I was always fairly confident about that, but it’s nice that it’s stayed true through all the revisions and tweaks that have been made.

Another good point is that the flavour text is (in the words of a playtester) “surprisingly non-cringe-inducing”. That sounds close enough to being a compliment to me; I’ll take it! I’m not putting this in the category of epic fiction, but it’s good to know that it’s making a positive contribution to the experience people have of the game.

But there are only three things that I could really say I’m proud of.

The State of The Game – January, 2021

As you may have noticed, the encounter table website is now live. Technically, it went active a little while ago, but this is the first major update it’s had… and it’s an update I’m quite excited about.

Why? Well, yesterday I received a shipment of components – tiles and dice. I’m running my poor little 3d printer ragged cranking out sets of figures too, and (of course) I can print the rulebooks etc. and packaging as desired. With these on hand, I can now start putting together pre-production sets of Close Encounters.